Upton vs. Landrieu

The House is debating the Upton bill. It will pass; the only question is how much Democratic support it will have. Upton himself told Greta Van Sustern that he hasn't whipped this, so he doesn't know how many votes they'll have. But he guessed that even after Obama's fake administrative fix, the bill might get 50 Democratic votes.

I previously predicted that Democrats would resort to arguing against changes to Obamacare by claiming the changes constituted "socialism," whereas the Democratic mandates represented "free markets.' The idiot of Northern Virginia, Jim Moran, Washington, Jim McDermott, just made that exact case, misrepresenting the Upton bill as mandating that insurance companies sell policies.

He got confused. That's the Landrieu bill. Or, more likely, he was simply, get this, lying as usual.

These seem to be the differences between Upton and Landrieu:

Upton provides only for a year-long ability to buy your old policy. Landrieu's bill says the policy must be offered until there are no longer any subscribers to the policy. Advantage: Landrieu

Landrieu's bill applies only to people who actually had the policy before October 1st. Upton is much more expansive: Upton says that if the policy is being offered to anyone, then new customers may buy into that policy as well. Landrieu thus seeks to limit the pool of people who can self-exempt from Obamacare, whereas Upton seeks to expand it. Advantage: Upton

Upton's bill says that insurance companies may offer the old plans. Landrieu says they must.

Many conservatives don't like that last part, because it's a "new mandate." Fine, but insurance companies have been mandated to do things for 50 years, and Obamacare imposes a slew of new mandates. One more mandate won't hurt -- and further, this mandate is necessary to undo the harm that Obama is imposed.

Let's face it, insurance companies are in bed with Obama (but getting uncomfortable with being used by him). They have no more interest in exempting people from Obamacare than Obama himself does. To get them to actually offer these policies will in fact take a mandate -- otherwise, they'll be content to dump everyone in the exchanges.

The insurance companies went along with every other mandate. I will not cry if they get hit with a new one. They were fine with mandates so long as citizens were being mandated themselves, to buy their product; they have, as a group, announced their openness to mandates.

So, impose the mandate on them. They surrendered their right to complain on this point. They're not victims, they're volunteers.

Advantage: Landrieu

My call: Go with Landrieu... but, if possible, add in Upton's provision that any other similar customer who qualifies for a plan that's being offered can also buy it.

The "drawback" of this is that it destroys Obamacare. It undermines the system. Yes, fine: This is what is needed. A decision must be made, and that decision must be forced.

Even if we have to make things so bad that insurance companies bring suit against the government, or begin dropping out of the individual market entirely.

The insurance companies are currently afraid of Obama, and are still playing footsie with him. The only way to overcome the Chicago Mob's coercion of insurance companies is, frankly, to coerce them from the other direction.

We may not be able to repeal Obamacare in one swoop, but we can repeal it piece-by-piece, exempting this class of the population, then this one, then the next one, until no one at all is in Obamacare except the uninsurable.

At that point, the American people can decide whether or not it wants to accept huge new spending levels to insure the uninsurable, or not. But at least the public will have an honest accounting of the actual costs, as opposed to Obamacare's current scheme, in which Obama imposes hidden taxes on specific citizens to pay for his boondoggle.

Obama, as you probably know, has threatened to veto any bill that forces him to keep his promise:

We must make him do that.

And we must make Democrats vote to override his veto.

Corrected: It was Jim McDermott who made the "Republicans love socialism, and Obamacare is 'free market' capitalism" argument, not Jim Moran. I have trouble telling these two crusty communists apart.

posted by Ace at 11:48 AM

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